Editorial

War drums

SELF-STYLED "ethical" foreign secretarv, Robin Cook is at the forefront
of Britain's pack of politicians, pundits and media hacks currently hounding
and vilifying the Yugoslav government.

These mouthpieces for the ruling class are hard at work waging
a daily propaganda offensive designed to prepare public opinion at home
for the possibility of war as well as signalling the seriousness of Nato's
air-strike threats to the Yugoslav leadership in Belgrade.

To justify this latest round of bullying and war preparations,
the media is full of pictures and accounts of the suffering in the Kosovo
province of Serbia. The Yugoslav army, police and political leaders are
being painted as monstrous murderers responsible for atrocities and for
the plight of refugees fleeing the fighting.

It is a tactic the imperialist powers have used time and again to deceive
people into believing that western interference, aggression and undeclared
wars against smaller and poorer countries are moral crusades whose only
purpose is to save the victims of oppression and uphold the principles
of democracy, peace and liberty. And as always, the leaders the West want
to cuff are declared to be either insane or despotic tyrants.

It is not difficult to set this propaganda up. Any conflict brings
its terrible images of death and suffering -- on both sides of the line.
If most of the on-the-spot news reports come from one side -- in this case
from the side of the Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA) -- we shall mostly see
pictures of KLA casualties, hear KLA opinions and see the effects of Yugoslav
guns. The view from the other side is hardly ever seen or heard and is
consequently ignored.

But worse than all the distortion of news is the hypocritical,
active involvement of western governments. The KLA is clearly not being
funded, armed with modern weapons, clothed and fed by the local small farmers
in the hills of Kosovo. Nor is Albania in a position to foot the bill.
The KLA exists because Western interests want it to exist.

The West now wants to intervene directly in the war because its
KLA puppet army has been pushed back and is losing the fight. The West,
far from being an impartial arbiter in the Balkans, has a clear agenda
of wanting to see the former Yugoslavia broken up so that western capital
can more easily swallow the small fragments. It also wants to snuff out
any remaining flickers of socialism in Europe, however small the flame.

Yugoslavia -- now always referred to in the western media as just
Serbia (all they intend it to be) -- has not invaded foreign soil, it is
simply defending the severeignty and integrity ofits own state. It did
not start the present fighting or seek war. It has already suffered the
piece-by-piece break-up of its territory and has been unfairly treated
by the western-imposed settlement in Bosnia.

The responsibility for the tragedy in Kosovo lies with imperialism
and the capitalist vultures who saw their chance to close in on Yugoslavia
when the former Soviet Union broke up.

Unfortunately, the Kosovan situation has led some progressives
to believe the KLA cause is a genuine national liberation struggle comparable
with the fight for Irish self-determination.

This is a mistaken and classless view. The struggle of the Irish
people is contrary to the interests of British imperialism. Ireland is
a sovereign state of which a part is still under colonial occupation by
a foreign power. The cause of Ireland is undeniably the cause of liberation
and justice.

The KLA on the other hand is backed by imperialism and serves
the interests of foreign governments, (including British imperialism) who
aim to dominate the region by encouraging separatism and reactionary nationalism.

When Ireland becomes free of the yoke of imperialism and the Irish
people as a whole are able to decide their own path the country of Ireland
will be stronger. When separatist groups succeed in breaking a country
into Pieces at the behest of western imperialism the remainng parts are
inevitably weaker. These are the class realities.

We say, No to war against Yugoslavia! No to Nato threats! Hands
off Yugoslavia!

Lead Story

Pay the nurses

NURSING Unions are demanding a substantial pay rise -- up to 20 per
cent -- next year to meet a crisis in the profession.

According to a report published last week by public sector union
Unison, entitled Paying the Price, one in five nurses is obliged to take
a second job in order to have enough money to meet bills.

And 70 per cent of nurses are thinking of quitting the job for
something better paid. The report is based on a survey of more than 2,000
nurses.

The unions have produced a water-tight claim for a big pay rise
including figures showing that the starting salary of a registered nurse
after training is generally 17 percent less than that of a newly qualified
teacherand 20 per cent less than that of a newly qualified police constable.

And the teaching profession itself is low paid to the point that
it also has severe recruiting problems.

The growing anger among nurses over pay levels increased after
Health Secretary Frank Dobson, at the Labour Party conference, spoke of
new government money going into the health service but none into nurses'
pay packets.

Glasgow midwife Carolyn Leckie said the Unison report gave an
accurate picture of current nursing morale.

"The climate is one of low morale," she said. "People feel underpaid
and undervalued. The only thing stopping people leaving is the lack of
suitable employment."

As a single parent, she finds the low wage a particular hardship
but cannot take a second job because of domestic responsibilities.

She said: "The government has to address the issue of pay. If
they don't people will vote with their feet. It is a crisis that the government
ignores at its peril."

Unison is demanding a substantial across-the-board pay rise and
a restructuring of key grades so that lowest paid nurses start on £9,215
(compared with £8,315 now) and qualified staff nurses have a starting
salary £14,225 (compared with £12,855) rising to £17,030.

The pay demand arrived on the desks of the NHS top managers at
the same time that the government was setting more targets for the service.

Targets for the next three years, which apply both to the NHS
and social service departments, include a cut of two per cent in the numbers
of psychiatric patients re-admitted to hospital and an annual reduction
of three per cent in the growth rate of emergency hospital admissions of
people over 75.

The top priority remains cutting waiting lists.

The nursing unions have demanded that the increase in funding
for the NHS as a whole of 5.7 per cent in real terms should be used in
part to raise nurses wages. There is no longer any excuse not to pay nurses
better.

Nurses pay has been held down, along with that of other public
sector workers, since the Tories started capping public sector pay in the
early 80s and its value has dwindled as inflation has steadily risen above
the capping level.

Last year they were given a rise of 3.8 per cent but it was staged:
two per cent in April and 1.8 per cent is still to be paid in December.

Unison chief nursing officer Ma Icolm Wing said: "Despite the
rewards of nursing in terms of high public esteem and job satisfaction,
the daily reality is a cocktail of understaffed wards, pathetic pay and
poor prospects.

"For the health of the NHS, Unison appeals to the government to
introduce a new pay system to stop the cycle of boom and bust in nurses'
pay. Otherwise we will all pay the price."

And he warned that "if the Prime Minister does not implement the
award, or does it in stages, our quarrel is with the government."

He said that nurses were sickened by the staged pay award. "The
only effective remedy for their pay malaise is a significant increase paid
in full without strings."

Maggic Dunn, who chaired the nurses' joint union negotiating team,
said: "This time the pay review body has a golden opportunity and so does
the government to make that leap which will reward nurses, midwives and
health visitors."

And she added: "The only way the recruitment and retention crisis
will be addressed is through a substantial pay award.

"For two years now we have seen more people leaving the register
of nurses, midwives and health visitors than joining it.

no career prospects

"These nurses are working elsewhere and the reasons are that there
are no career prospects and there isn't the starting salary.

The Royal College of Nursing has estimated there are 8,000 vacant
nursing posts and that 25 per cent of working nurses will be eligible for
retirement, at age 55, by the year 2,000.

The government has accepted that there is a severe nursing shortage
and has said that 140,000 trained nurses have opted out of the NHS.

But Andrew Foster, chairperson of the human resources policy group
at the NHS Confederation says a substantial pay increase cannot be afforded.

And yet the government is spending millions on Trident missiles
and has recently commissioned two new giant aircraft carriers.

Feature

THE MINISTRY of Defence is forcing former members of the armed
forces in Scotland from their homes, according to a report last week from
the housing charity Shelter.

Some families have been given just a few week's notice to leave
their homes by the Defence Housing Executive, an agency acting on behalf
of Crown Properties.

The DHE was set up by the Tory government in 1995 when it sold
off most MoD family accommodation in England and Wales. Homes in Scotland
were excluded from the deal, apparently due to "legal issues limiting the
duration of leases".

The DHE claims the houses are needed for currently serving personnel,
although many MoD homes have been standing empty for a long time.

Around 100 families, throughout Scotland, may be affected. These
are families who have been turned down for council housing because they
have been deemed to be already adequately housed.

Former RAF chef Christopher Mohan, with his wife and three year-old
son are under notice of eviction.

He left the RAF last January. "I contacted Aberdeenshire council
before I came out," he said, "and they said there was no point in us applying
for housing because we were adequately housed."

The DHE told him there was no problem with the family staying
in the house. Then a higher DHE office contacted him. "They said we should
not have been told we could stay. There was obviously a lack of communication
between offices."

Mr Mohan is now a self-employeed taxi driver. He applied for housing
benefit but his claim took nearly six months to process. During that time
rent arrears built up.

If he had been a tenant of a council, housing association or private
landlord, no magistrate would have granted an eviction order while a housing
benefit claim was still being sorted out.

But the MoD does not give tenancies and those who live in its
homes do not have any of the same legal protection as civilians.

Serving military families do not pay rent, the home is provided
as part of their wages. When they leave the forces, these families have
no security of tenure.

Many of those threatened with eviction are women who have separated
from service husbands. They are also very vulnerable.

Because they are living in Crown properties, they are not given
tenancies and are not entitled to housing benefit.

Shelter says there is no consistency in the way these families
are treated by the DHE and the rules need to be made consistent and clear.

David Gibb, speaking for Shelter, said: "I think there are a number
of outstanding issues that remain unanswered which we will be seeking to
get answered through parliamentary questions once Parliament restarts."

He added that the DHE needs to make clear how many MoD properties
are likely to be needed for future service personnel.

"We also need to be told how many of these tenants are in receipt
of housing benefit. Housing benefit is administered by local authorities
and the housing benefit regulations are quite clear that benefit is not
payable to Crown tenants but it is available to "irregular occupiers".

"These are people who do not have a tenancy -- normally people
who were in married quarters and there has been a breakdown in their relationship.

"Although there is no housing benefit entitlement there is a voluntary
scheme operated by the MoD, which the local authority can administer on
the department's behalf.

"Questions need to be answered on the level of advice and options
people are given by their local authorities and individual DHE offices.

"The real issue is about the difference between the official line
and the reality of what's happening to people.

"We also want to know what the DHE is planning to do with all
these surplus houses."

International

Strikes and protests sweep Russia

by Steve Lawton

THOUSANDS of workers took to the streets throughout Russia as we go
to press, as part of a growing campaign of action to demand an estimated
$14 billion [84 billion roubles] owed in back pay at pre-crisis rates.
Now, even if they get it all restored, its value will be less than $6 billion.

The action had been called by the 50-million strong Russian Federation
of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR) and supported by the Communist Party
of the Russian Federation (CPRF) led by Gennadi Zyuganov.

Union leader Gennady Khodokov said: "Russian workers have been
deceived again and again, and we are not going to be robbed this time."

Around 200,000 professionals in Moscow doing the bidding of the
"robbers", many on five times the official average wage, have now been
laid off as a result of the crisis.

In a statement by the Central Russian Strike Movement Coordinating
Council in Sovetskaya Rossiya, calling for nationwide protests, they called
upon workers to form "legal organ's of working people's power in the centre
and the provinces".

In a prelude to Wednesday's actions, around 6,000 gathered in
a park near Moscow's White House last Sunday to commemorate the 1993 massacre
of its anti-Yeltsin defenders. There is a small permanent vigil near to
the Miners' encampment.

Among those present to remember the victims was General Albert
Makashov, a serving Communist deputy in the Duma and one of the leaders
of the October 1993 defence, who is calling, again, for the overthrow of
the Yeltsin regime. Sensitive to the looming Russia-wide protests, 1,500
police were deployed at the rally.

One angry protester shouted out that "Russia has been sold for
some stinking greenbacks" and warned that she "would shoot anyone with
dollars."

But Prime Minister Yevgenny Primakov, who may not have heard that,
made it clear he will continue to allow dollar currency circulation and
will not nationalise the banks. According to the Russian Central Bank,
there is about $l50 billion in US currency circulating in Russia.

Although he says he will begin paying workers again, he still
intends to continue with state privatisations and free market policies.
At the same time he is faced with a new crisis in Chechenia following the
recent kidnapping of communication workers -- three British and one New
Zealander .

Pay is the hot issue everywhere, closely followed by welfare payments.
Vladivostok's ambulance workers have been on strike since the Sumner due
to a 19-month backlog of wages. Teachers have been on strike since September
in the Far East.

During the Summer 3,500 scientists went on strike at one of the
10 former secret nuclear cities -- Arzamas 16. One of its more outspoken
critics on nuclear leaks is facing trial from 20 October on a charge of
treason for publishing a report for the Norwegian environmental group,
the Bellona Foundation, exposing contamination in the Murmansk area by
the nuclear fleet.

There are active and decommissioned subs there and one was recently
taken over by a submariner who, described as having gone crazy, killed
eight of the Vepr's crew before killing himself. They've been called "floating
Chernobyl's".

The general fabric ofRussia is falling apart, along with its defence
forces. The post office has stopped paying the railways for mail distribution.
The rail ministry suspects sharp practice and refuses to transport the
goods which are now accumulating in hundreds of cars along Russia's 17
Lines.

Those who get wages are now forced to spend nearly all of it on
food where once they spent about 60 per cent of it on food. According to
Moscow's Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of the Population, basic
foodstuffs shot up 500 per cent while luxury items increased slowly.

Some predict a virtual famine is on its way. This year's harvest
is poor -- it's projected to be about 40 per cent down on last year at
around 50 million tonnes.

Hospitals are being hit by the paralysis of economic activity
and frozen banks. Russia is dependent on 82 per cent of its medicines from
imports -- next to nothing is getting through now. That also means 22 million
veterans entitled to free medicines are being denied their needs.

The financial and overproduction crisis is hitting Russian oil
pipeline deals. Production in Kazakhstan is being reduced by about two-thirds.

British News

Don't repeat the mistakes of the past, says Adams

by Keith Bennett in Blackpool

SIMV FEIN President Gerry Adams MP last week called on the British
labour movement not to repeat the mistakes of 30 years ago when they failed
to respond to the peaceful civil rights campaign in the north of Ireland.

Adams was speaking at a fringe briefing and press conference called
by Sinn Fein during the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, which he
and his delegation were attending as guests.

He said that, up until 1969, when British troops were deployed
on the streets of the north of Ireland under a Labour government, Westminster
had ignored the huge scale of repression and social injustice in the north,
despite the efforts of then Belfast Republican Labour MP Gerry Fitt to
bring them to wider attention.

Adams told his audience that had the then British Labour government
"done the decent thing" in 1969, by moving to engage with the Irish government
and bring forward the unionists, then, despite all the difficulties, he
was quite sure "we would now be living in a united Ireland".

Likewise, the present peace process, which could be said to date
from 1994, vindicated the stand taken by present MPs Ken Livingstone and
John McDonnell, who had taken the initiative to invite the Sinn Fein leadership
to visit the then Greater London Council a decade earlier.

Had the Livingstone initiative met with an appropriate response
from the British government, we would now have a democratic peace settlement
in place.

The fundamental lesson to be drawn from such events, Adams argued,
was that the politics of "marginalisation, exclusion, demonisation and
condernnation" do not work.

And, while generously acknowledging the honourable exceptions,
Adams was justifiably scathing about the overall record of British Labour
with regard to Ireland.

Even among the better elements, there was a tendency to "long
distance internationalism", in support of the struggles in South Africa,
Chile, Palestine, El Salvador or of the African Americans, all of which,
the Sinn Fein leader stressed, were extremely worthy, but they did not
go to the heart of British politics in the way that the Irish question
has always done.

He said that the only principled position for the movement here
to take was to campaign for an Ireland inwhich the Irish people can organise
their society in whatever way they want. This did not necessarily involve
supporting Sinn Fein or even advocating a united Ireland.

Adams stressed that he was not putting the onus on the British
Labour Party to solve all the problems of the Irish people, but, he added,
they could not avoid responsibility for continued intransigent unionist
attitudes. He asked his audience if they could conceive of a situation
in Britain where it would be allowed to picket a church or a synagogue
for a year, as had been the case with the Catholic church at Harryville.

Although it had been modified and made conditional by the terms
of the Good Friday Agreement British policy was still to uphold the union,
so it had yet to fundamentally break from the "sad chapters" of the British
Labour Party and its previous governments, for example, the extreme repressive
policies of Secretary of state Roy Mason and the callous visit to hunger
striker Francis Hughes by Michael Foot's spokesman, Don Concanon.

In contrast, Adams praised the "good and noble people" in the
movement who had "done their best".

And he paid tribute to Prime Minister Tony Blair. It had taken
his and his government's imagination, and Secretary of State Mo Mowlam's
courage, to get everyone out of the mess created by the last Tory government.

From his dealings with the present government, Adams believed
that as social democrats, they had no desire to uphold oppression.

As we approach the new millenium, there was a need for activists
to take the long view. The type of opportunities that Labour activists
wanted the British people to enjoy, and the kind of new and inclusive society
they wished to build here, were what the Irish people also wanted for themselves.

This ideal was contained in the 1916 Easter Rising Proclamation of the
Irish Republic, which spoke of "cherishing all the children of the nation
equally", and also embraced gender equality, for an Ireland where women
constitute the majority of the population.

Addressing the key question of decommissioning, Adams said that
the matter was not one of guns but one of change.The problem was that the
unionists had been in charge for so long that many of them could still
not conceive of "having a Fenian about the place" in govemmental terms.

Decommissioning, the Sinn Fein leader stressed, was not in his
party's gift. The Irish Republican Army believed it had "done a mighty
thing" by silencing its guns and he recalled the warning of the Social
Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP's) Seamus Mallon, Deputy Chief Minister
designate of the Northern Ireland Assembly, "don't kick the dog to see
if it's asleep"

no preconditions

The Good Friday Agreement did not specify decommissioning as a precondition
for movement on other fronts. And Sinn Fein had already gone beyond its
obligations. There was nothing to specify that the party had to appoint
a representative to liaise with the decommissioning body, "let alone someone
with the stature and authority of Martin McGuiness."

Adams said that the party leadership had sold the Good Friday
Agreement to the rank-and-file, including the change to the party's constitution
to enable elected representatives to take their seats in the Northern Ireland
Assembly, on the basis that the unionist side would also give on their
historic positions.

"And, from our point of view, the most potent signal that the
old days are finally over would be for a Sinn Fein minister from the Falls
Road, or the Bogside, or from any other Republican area in the north, to
take their place, alongside the representatives of other parties in the
government of the north. That would signal that the old days of a Protestant
state for a Protestant people really were over for good."

Sinn Fein's position was clear: Ireland belongs to the people
who live in Ireland, irrespective of where they came from.

Adams informed the gathering that he had just had a meeting with
Tony Blair. He had told the Prime Minister that it was his responsibility
to defend and implement the Good Friday Agreement in its entirety and without
the injection of new preconditions.

The Sinn Fein President concluded his briefing by again reflecting
on history.

We were currently celebrating the 200th anniversary of the United
Irishmen. In 1798, Irish revolutionaries were supporting their counterparts
in France and America, and were, in turn, being supported by British progressives.

Indeed, there had been such a constant thread throughout history.
In the English Revolution of the 1640s, the Levellers had been executed
for refusing to fight in Cromwell's armies in Ireland. And Irish workers
had been to the fore in the leadership of the Chartists, the first modern
working class movement.

Sinn Fein wished to develop a "strategic engagement" and dialogue
with the broadest possible range of progressive forces in Britain. "And
when we get the new Ireland we're seeking, you'll be able to sit back and
say you did something, that you contributed to something important in history."

A large number of other fringe events on Ireland also took place
during the Labour conference:

* The Labour Party Irish Society organised a social evening with
"great craic with funk traditional Irish band, Blackwater."

* The trade union Unison hosted a discussion on equality and participation.
Speakers represented civil liberty and community development groups, the
trade union and women's movements, along with Patrick Yu from the Chinese
Welfare Association in Belfast, representing the Northern Ireland Council
for Ethnic Minorities.

* The Agreed Ireland Forum hosted speakers from Sinn Fein and
the SDLP, along with Labour MP and Tory defector, Peter Temple-Morris,
who, under the previous government had been one of the first Conservatives
to open a dialogue with Sinn Fein.

* The TUC and CBI organised a joint meeting on Northern Ireland
-- A Peaceful Future, sponsored by TUC General Secretary John Monks.

* The Labour Committee for Peace and Progress in Ireland gave
a platform to speakers from the Progressive Unionist Party, Workers' Party
and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.